3 Tips for Successfully Managing Your Shared IP Address

Posted by Clifford ChiAugust 30, 2016

If you’re the owner of a shared IP address, you know your deliverability is only as strong as your weakest sender. All it takes is one awry metric from a sender to threaten your IP address’s inbox placement, even if every other sender follows email best practices religiously.

The stakes are high when you manage multiple senders on your IP address, but fear not, here are three ways you can win the hand.

1) Make sure you understand your own sender reputationMailbox providers use sender reputation to determine whether your IP address is trustworthy or not. They account for a lot of factors when measuring your sender reputation, like subscriber engagement, spam complaints, list quality, and more (if you don’t know your IP address’s reputation, then check out Sender Score, a free tool that measures sender reputation on a scale of 0-100).

Since your IP address’ reputation is in the hands of the senders you oversee, you need to be sure they are all following email best practices. But how do you do that?

2) Gain visibility into each sender’s campaign metricsIf you don’t have access to each sender’s campaign metrics, then you can’t examine the underlying basis of your IP address’ inbox placement: each sender’s email practices.

Gaining visibility into each sender’s campaign metrics enables you to diagnose and troubleshoot any sender issue causing problems with your IP address. For example, if you notice a certain sender’s subscriber engagement is low, then you can investigate and potentially discover their list is full of secondary accounts or spam traps and, in turn, refine their list acquisition strategy.

Once you uncover these insights for each sender and help them fulfill their individual email marketing needs, your IP address’ deliverability and reputation will see a steady improvement (if you need a refresher on which metrics provide which insights, then check out thisblog post on the email metrics that matter).

3) Make sure each sender maintains email best practicesAfter you have helped each sender implement email best practices and update their authentication records, make sure to keep them on the cutting edge of the email space. Email policies will constantly evolve, and helping each sender adapt to these changes will allow for better deliverability, sender reputation, and ROI (if you need help keeping up with the email space, then subscribe to our blog).

If you want to learn how an actual company effectively manages their shared IP, then check out our latest case study on Signature Travel Network. They are a travel cooperative who handles the email marketing of over 6,000 travel professionals and manage thousands of domains on one IP address!

About Clifford Chi

Clifford Chi is a Marketing Coordinator Intern at Return Path. He enjoys creating relevant content that helps and educates others. He also loves using his analytical skills to help drive effective business decisions. When he's not at work, you can find Clifford cheering on the St. Louis Cardinals, playing guitar, and overanalyzing Don Draper's life in Mad Men. Connect with him on LinkedIn.